Back in business; Sylvia's rebounds from fire ... in time for prom.

Byline: Nancy Sheehan

On Thursday evening, Feb. 8, a grease fire broke out in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant in downtown Worcester and spread quickly. Within minutes, thick, black smoke began to fill Sylvia's Dress Shop next door at 517 Main St. The sales staff and 21 customers were forced to flee, including one woman who ran into the street wearing the wedding gown she had been trying on. No one was injured, but $300,000 worth of ball gowns, the store's specialty, were ruined on the eve of prom season. The store, a downtown fashion fixture since 1931, was closed, but not for long. It opened for business the next day to a steady stream of customers and well-wishers who had heard about the fire from news reports.

"We took orders, special orders," owner Bruce Swirsky said. Customers chose gowns from manufacturers' display catalogs and Swirsky's Web site, www.sylviasdressshop.com. "We did around 40 specials," he said. "They heard about us. They came in. They were worried that we weren't going to have any business. They were worried about everything except themselves. They came in, sat down and said `Bruce, can you get me this dress?' They were regular customers, friends and people who we never saw before."

What inspires such loyalty?

Part of it is a matter of time. Sylvia's Dress Shop was opened by Swirsky's grandparents in 1931 just down the block from the present location. "We were an old-ladies' store," Swirsky said. "We were selling housedresses and smocks." They named the store after their little girl, Sylvia, who was Swirsky's mother. She ran the business until Swirsky took over about 35 years ago.

Another reason for customers' post-fire fidelity is the store staff's gentle, dedicated customer service, which draws prom shoppers, brides-to-be and their mothers to the retail hinterland that downtown has become.

But Swirsky can remember when Sylvia's was a little shop among a bevy of bigger stores. "You had Denholm's, Ulian's, Lerner's Howard's," he said as he stood in his shop earlier this week surrounded by billows of sequined organza. He pointed in the direction of each fallen giant as he spoke. "You had Barnard's, the Rexall drugstore, Easton's, you had Kresge's, Woolworth's, Grant's, Newberry's, you had Charlie Kay..."

How did Sylvia's stay in business with all that competition?

"It was easy," he said. "People come to a small store looking for something they can't find in a department store, so if a manufacturer sold something in a department store, we wouldn't carry it." There also were a lot more customers downtown in those days.

"If you take pictures from 1953 or '54, you'd see cars lined up on both sides of the street, bumper-to-bumper traffic and lots of walking," he said. "If you had a storm and out on the street it was snowing like hell people would still be walking around and you'd be busy as heck because they didn't worry about (driving in ) the snowstorms. They'd all hop the bus."

The fire nearly singed the hopes of a few parties of imminent, including one set for that Saturday, just two days after the blaze. The gowns were all in storage at a smoke ravaged Sylvia's, but there was no need to nix the nuptials. "I called the factory right away," Swirsky said. "I had a gown shipped the next day. Our tailoring is in a separate area. It's not in the store. So we were able to, just the minute it came in, to shoot it right over there and get it all tailored up. I got everything done. We didn't make any money. We lost money, but that's OK because we satisfied the girl."

Customer satisfaction is a skill honed over three generations at Sylvia's. When it comes to gown-seeking high schools girls, the key is to treat them like would-be prom queens rather than princesses when they come in without their mothers. Usually, they're just looking at that point.

"When you treat the kids like grown-ups they come back," he said. "If you treat them like kids, like certain stores do, they resent it. The trick is to get them to come back because you know they can't buy without their mothers. "

But mothers present other challenges.

"Mothers, mothers, mothers," Swirsky said, with more than a hint of exasperation in his voice. "There are a lot of cutouts this year - low backs, plunging fronts. The kids see it on the Oscars and in the magazines and they've got to have it. So we work with the mothers. I say, `We'll pull it up. We'll do a little adjustment here' and usually they go along with it."

When they don't, there's likely to be trouble of the sulky, overdramatic sort.

"When you have a child who wants something and she's not going to talk to you for two months and now she's not going to go to the prom. You now what that's like," Swirsky, father of a grown daughter and son, said. "They leave the store like that and then I'll get a call that night or sometimes just by the time they get home. "This is so and so and we're gonna buy the gown.'"

That gown might cost $800, as some of the elegant Jovani gowns in the shop do. Or it might be in the $100 range. Sizes are even more varied. "We go from zero all the way up to 52," he said. "I don't have a lot in 52, but I carry two- or three-pieces." Which is two or three more than most stores carry. Ask any frustrated mother and daughter who has gone looking for something in that range.

"When they come in the mothers are all upset. The daughters are all upset," Swirsky said. "Every place they've gone there's nothing. But we settle them down." In sizes 18 to 26, the selection is greater. "We carry maybe 15 to 20 in each of those sizes so we do a lot of business there," he said.

Altogether, Sylvia's will see between 2,000 to 2,200 prom dresses go out the door each season. That kind of volume makes the store's dress registry a critical bit of record keeping.

"We only sell one gown of a style to a school," he said. "If a girl comes in and is going to Doherty High and she wants this gown and nobody's bought it we'll sell it to her. If somebody comes in for the same gown that's going to Doherty High we won't sell it to her. It doesn't matter if it's a hundred dollar gown or a thousand dollar gown, they get the same service."

Will Swirsky's children carry on the family tradition of keeping even the most difficult customers satisfied?

"No. I'm the last one," Swirsky said. "My kids are educated. My daughter is a lawyer and my son's in computers. They can work four days a week and they make six figures a year. They're never going to do this."

That doesn't mean the shop will close anytime soon. Swirsky says you'll be able to find your gown downtown for decades.

"I'll get another 20 years out of it," he said.

Prom by the book

It's prom season. Are you ready? "Seventeen's Guide to Your Perfect Prom: a Planner and Scrapbook" by Joanna Saltz takes readers step-by-step through the planning process, from picking the right dress to applying makeup that lasts through the night.

The book starts with budget planning, which sounds boring. But the average girl spends $573 on prom night including everything from the dress to beauty products to after-prom outfits, so a little pre-prom number crunching can save big bucks.

Be prepared to spend time as well as money. The average girl will visit eight stores and try on 24 prom dresses before she finds the right one. Saltz's advice: Keep your posse to a minimum. "Try not to bring a ton of people with you on your shopping mission - all of their opinions will make it hard for you to decide what you like."

So it's all about the dress - and tress and stress. "There is no right or wrong way to wear your hair," stylist Ken Paves says in one of the books many tip boxes. "A simple down style can be just as glamorous as a fancy updo."

The book leaves no prom detail untackled, from your perfectly powdered nose down to your perfectly picked-out hose. Here's one hose tip to take stock in: "Don't pick a shade that's super dark thinking it will make your legs look tan - it will just look like you're wearing someone else's legs."

Get the book for free

If you would like a copy of the book, we have one to give away. Send your name and address by e-mail to [e-mail] by Wednesday and you'll be entered in a random drawing.

The search for the right prom dress

What will high-schoolers wear to prom this year? Cost will be a factor with "cheap," "discount" and "affordable" all cracking the top 20 prom dress searches on Yahoo. Another prom trend must have parents gnashing their teeth. Yahoo! searches for "sexy" and "short" both cracked the top 10. The lineup:

1. 2007 prom dresses

2. Cheap prom dresses

3. Sexy prom dresses

4. Plus Size prom dresses

5. Designer prom dresses

6. Jovani prom dresses

7. Jessica McClintock prom dresses

8. Short prom dresses

9. Flirt prom dresses

10. Tiffany prom dresses

11. Discount prom dresses

12. Modest prom dresses

13. Xcite prom dresses

14. Mori Lee prom dresses

15. Unique prom dresses

16. Vintage prom dresses

17. Alyce prom dresses

18. Seventeen Magazine prom dresses

19. Affordable prom dresses

20. Faviana prom dresses

Top 10 colors searches

1. Red

2. White

3. Gold

4. Pink

5. Yellow

6. Black

7. Green

8. Orange

9. Purple

10. Blue

SOURCE: Yahoo! Buzz http://buzz.yahoo.com .

ART: PHOTOS

PHOTOG: (1) ED COLLIER; (2, 3 AND 4) T&G Staff/CHRISTINE PETERSON

CUTLINE: (1) Bartlett High School student Jessica Katz, 17, during a prom fashion show at the Webster school. (2) Above, Bruce Swirsky puts together a special order for a customer. (3) Left, Auburn High School student Katie Carson and her mom, Julie, adjust

a mauve dress. (4) Auburn High School student Nicole Dubois, 17, and her friend Ayla Nelson, 18, at Sylvia's Dress Shop in Worcester.